Emotional knock-out in the trenches

How strange to find RC Sherriff's elderly theatrical war-horse, which premiered in London 75 years ago yesterday, still comes at you with such galloping power and poignancy.

David Grindley's superlatively acted production of murky scenes from the First World War, with doomed soldiers in a dug-out near the Front Line, captures the stiff-lipped air of putting on a brave show. Sherriff, who served in the East Surrey regiment, offers the equivalent of a sepia photograph. He carves an authentic, slightly sentimental periodpiece, though without the expletives and plain sex-talk that stage censorship then banned.

Jonathan Fensom's set is a muddy, improvised shelter into which little light intrudes. Grindley's tense, gripping production conveys the simmering calm before the battle-storm. Young and middle-aged officers, waited upon by Phil Cornwell's cook-waiter, treat the rigours of living in mud with the threat of imminent death as if they were on a difficult camping holiday. Class rules the roost: the men feast on bread and cheese after one skirmish while officers enjoy chicken and champagne.

In Sherriff 's accusatory, politically pointed perspective, the badges of heroism are lightly worn. Soldiers, mainly the privates, line up as infinite expendables in the top brass's wildly defective battle-plans. Only Ben Meyje's fine, would-be deserter shimmers with panic. David Haig's wonderful Lieutenant Osborne, caught in a pedantic, contemplative calm, faces up to a raid that he guesses must kill him, in a blaze of nonchalance.

The play's action centres upon two days in trenches before the German attack. Christian Coulson's rather bland Raleigh, three years younger than the 21-year-old 1731. company commander, Geoffrey Streatfeild's whisky-sodden Captain Stanhope, whom he hero-worshipped at school, faces war as if it were a big adventure. Streatfeild is magnificent.

His Stanhope, voice cracking and shaking with inappropriate rage and grief, teeters on the verge of the breakdown to which no one dares succumb. By the time of the coup de theatre curtain-call, this Journey's End has proved an emotional knock-out.